Minivan Website/Service Cost Rant

What year is your T&C? If you are having non-warranty work done, there is

A little on the high side, but not too far. Donno what he considers "premium"; we know he's not using synthetic oil. Very good quality oil can be had for under $2/qt and you need about 5 quarts; a premium filter can be had for about $5, so the other half is labor.

Bzzzzzzt! There's nothing to "service" in the fuel injection system. The throttle body (which, technically, is not a part of the fuel injection system) occasionally needs cleaning; this does not take even close to $110 worth of work.

Too expensive

Not bad

Bzzzt! No such "flush" is required, and even if it were, this price is

Bzzzt! Way outta line.

Bzzt! Way outta line.

On the high side.

Exactly. So go do it.

DS

Read and follow the service requirements in the book that came with the vehicle! Make sure if you have the oil and transmission fluid changed that they use the proper viscosity oil and do not add additives to the transmission fluid or oil.

You don't need to change plugs for about 80,000 miles, again look at your service requirements.

If you change coolant be sure only the recommended type with no additives are used. You don't need to flush it out as part of the change.

Richard.

The prices aren't out of line for a dealer, but you can probably get the work done cheaper elsewhere. At 30K miles, though, I wouldn't be doing much of any of that stuff. The plugs, supposedly, are good for 100,000 miles. In reality, you'll get about 60K-70K out of them. Fuel injection "service" can be done yourself by adding a bottle of Techtron to your next tank of gas. Flush the cooling system? Why? The coolant is extended life 5 year/100,000 mile. If you're paranoid, you can do tranny service now, but I didn't flush ours until it hit 70K+ miles.

Supposedly, but not in reality...

| In reality, you'll get about 60K-70K out of them.

More like 30K-40K from my experience.

| Fuel injection "service" can be done yourself by | adding a bottle of Techtron to your next tank of gas.

Throttle body service should be all that is required at this point. I would replace the fuel filter at this point however (not mentioned).

| Flush the cooling system? Why? The coolant | is extended life 5 year/100,000 mile.

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. I wouldn't go beyond 3-years personally.

| If you're paranoid, you can do tranny service | now, but I didn't flush ours until it hit 70K+ miles.

Correct, no flush. However, yes to a filter and fluid change at this point...but no flush necessary. (about $100 US)

I got 90K on my original set and 65K on the second set.

Matt

I've got two Chrysler minivans in my driveway and got a lot further than

I don't have to believe it when the proof is in my driveway.

...............and I got 97K on my original set and 81K on the second.

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the responses. My unit is an 02 Town and Country LXI AWD.

I think my dealer is on crack! LOL!

I agree with you on the plugs, but the poster was probably using platties or some such fancy plugs instead of the plain old standard sparkplugs.

But why push your luck on the coolant? I am leery after 3 years too. Coolant doesen't necessairly go bad in a way that's visible on a hydrometer. You can still have plenty of freeze or boilover protection on old coolant. What you don't have is corrosion protection because the chemicals in the coolant that keep the water and oxygen from attacking the metal of the engine block get used up.

If you think for a second about the mileage rating on coolant you will see it's rediculous.

With motor oil, it is subject primariarly to the impact of blowby pumping it full of dirt. The more miles you drive the more dirt gets into the oil, so there is a direct coorelation between mileage and oil wear out.

But with coolant, no such coorelation exists. Coolant does not have stuff introduced into it, it is a liquid in a sealed system. It can circulate in an engine 100 times or 100,000 times and it's all the same to the liquid. Instead, coolant wears out due to age - the longer it's in contact with the metals of the cooling system, the more of the anticorrosion compounds are sacrificed. So the only thing that matters is the 5 years, not the

Ted

Just don't stretch the spark plug life out too long. I've seen several posts of people having a heck of a time breking the plugs loose that have been left in a tad too long on aluminum heads. To reduce the likelihood of that that next time, put a little anti-seize on the plug threads (keeping it totally away form the thread tips and electrodes) before putting them in.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Here is a great Mini Van Site.

You didn't think quite long enough, Ted. :-)

Except that almost all chemical reaction rates are temperature dependent, with the rate of reaction increasing with temperature. So, the reactions will be much higher at operating temperature than at room temperature or -20. Mileage is a reasonable surrogate for time at operating temperature. Probably be more accurate to have the ECU keep track of the time/temperature profile and then turn on a light when the coolant needs changing, but mileage is what most drivers are used to so that is a reasonable surrogate in my opinion.

Matt

I got ~45K miles and about 4 years out of the original plugs (owner's manual said they were rated 100K miles) on our 1999 3.8L T&C minivan. It was occasionally mis-firing at idle despite a good throttle body cleaning so I went ahead and changed the plugs (and wires too since I was already doing most of the work). Immediately after doing this the engine idle smoothed out very nicely and it has been running well since that time.

On the $115 to do the plugs at the dealer, I agree with Dan that it is a bit on the high side, but if you choose to do it yourself, you need to understand that one of the rear plugs is a real PITA to get at and another of the rears requires some minor disassembly of the alternator bracket to gain access from the top. IIRC, the whole job took less than two hours to do the plugs and the wires. Of this time, between an hour and 90 minutes was for the difficult rear plug which was only accessible from under the vehicle.

Bob

Open up your owners manual and find the service section. Then go down the line and see what services Chrysler recommends you do at 30k miles. I doubt they list fuel injection service, auto transmission flush or the need to replace the spark plugs. Eliminating these will save you have of the bill.

--------------- Alex

You DON'T want to use "plain old standard sparkplugs" instead of "platties or some such fancy plugs" when changing the plugs in these vans.

I'll pay the $115 ANY day rather than try do change these plugs myself.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have an 89 Dodge Grand Caravan with 210,000 miles on it. I never have had any fuel injection problems.

A number of years ago, a dealer service department tried to sell me a fuel injector cleaning and a "reset of the computer" for several hundred dollars. I wish that I had gotten a formal estimate signed by the service manager. With that and a complaint to Chrysler, I could have gotten several stars subtracted from their "Five Star Rating".

I happened to know that there is only one thing in the 89 computer that can be reset, the mileage when the ECS was serviced. When I told them that I had my own DRB II, and could do it myself, they quickly backed off.

A short time later, I learned that the dealer had lost his Five Star Rating, probably from someone else that he had tried to defraud.

Believe me you still have it good! Here in the UK a 60,000 mile service (or was it 65,000) without the changing of plugs costs the equivalent of US$1500.00, probably more now as it was a couple of years ago that I had one done. Interim oil change services cost circa US$500. By the way, I was quoted the equivalent of US$370.00 for a plug change.

Gerald

No, you can have a car doing city driving most of the time and a car doing highway driving most of the time and the operating time/mileage ratio will be quite different. An engine runs at the same temp whether idling most of the time or running at 3000 rpm most of the time.

The 5 years assumes of course that the car is a "daily driver" during that time.

You do have a point of course, that cars that aren't driven as much can extend the coolant lifespan. But this isn't exactly linear because if I store a car and start it once a day and idle it for 15 minutes, it's going to be many hours before the coolant temp drops down again, and during that time the chemical reactions are going to be faster.

That is correct - of course then the ECU is going to use the manufacturers programmed presets on the coolant, which are going to be (in my opinion) rediculously high. It is after all in the automakers best interest for you to maintain your car only enough so that the car lasts a little bit beyond the warranty then croaks. They do not want you putting the kind of preventative maintainence into your car that will appreciably extend it's lifespan past the design lifespan. This is where the extended oil drain intervals come from.

Not for coolant changes. The recommendations used to be every 3 years as I recall. It's only lately that they started making a mileage recommendation.

I might add that it is far easier to program the ECU with a simple mileage counter that triggers different service commands as a result of mileage. Consider that all car warranties are based on mileage and it is easy to see where this is going. The automakers want to ensure that their dealerships get a regular payout in servicing fluids and such throughout the 150,000+ miles of expected lifespan on the vehicle. This is regardless of the fact that a car driven hard over the same period is far more likely to break down than a car that is gently driven over the warranty period.

But, the automakers want regular servicing on the vehicle to make money, regardless of whether the parts that are replaced (sparkplugs, fuel filter, coolant, brakes, tires, etc.) really are worn to their service life or not - except in the case of parts that actually effect the lifespan of serious components, like the engine and transmission. I mean, they are wanting you to bring the thing in monthly so they can add window washer fluid - yet at the same time recommending 100,000+ miles on coolant, trans fluid, and extended drains on oil? Come on!

The easiest way to guarentee this is to input a simple program into the car computer that tells the driver every x000 miles to take it in for service. That is why all the recommendations are subtly being shifted to mileage. I've even heard people recommending battery replacement intervals based on mileage, if you can believe it.

Ted